Since there's been a lot of discussion recently over soloing SA TA and stacking weaponskills, as well as accuracy and haste, and DoT ratios to ability ratios I figured I'd put together a simple guide to help everyone find their answers for themselves. As I've mentioned before kinematics and I came up with the concept of adding a tab to his parser specifically designed for thieves a while ago. He's updated the parser several times and it's a really awesome thing, so I'm going to go over how to use the thing for thief purposes.

You will want the version number.zip file, which is currently version 1.1.7.zip. Once extracted it will update your net framework and install the program. Each version update of FFXI will probably change the memloc, or the value the parser needs in order to be able to read the data logs. He updates it after each version and incorporates it into the new version of the parser, but he also posts it on his site so you can also manually change it. Simple enough.

You will need microsoft net framework installed as well. I'll quote the extra requirements below (I've had kparser since it's beta testing infant stages, so i forgot all the extra thingamabobs).

Note: Remember, NEVER download any add ons to products and software anywhere except the manufacturer or developer's official web site. This is the only site that you will know is safe, as it is the only one officially endorsed by Microsoft Inc. (TM)

Once you get the parser running it's as simple as starting it up and logging into FFXI. It collects data by storing and reading the chat logs, so it's highly accurate in its collection methods. The extra attacks tab is unreliable however because it goes by the system clock when logs happen, and due to lag burps with haste it will misinterpret many rounds as double/triple attack as the chat log catches up.

On that note, I'll quote kinematics here since it's relevant.

Quote:

Also, you don't need to keep all tabs open all the time. You can close individual tabs (either from the Windows menu or right-clicking on the tab list) or all 'other' tabs than the one you're focused on. If you have performance problems, closing tabs is the easiest way to reduce the load on the CPU.

I have a new computer with a strong RAM and CPU so I can leave it on fulltime (I didn't think it was very demanding), but for older systems disabling tabs (like the multi attack round) can assist with performance. Considering the multi attack is unreliable with low delay that one doesn't do much for us anyway (mine showed three times more double attacks than triple attacks, and we KNOW brutal earring isn't THAT good (wish it was O.o))

The tabs are fairly easy to figure out, and the one that was designed for us is on the far right end. It can only be viewed once the parser is paused or stopped, and it holds all the relevant details to what our abilities are doing.

I have a link to a screenshot of the results of a parse I had at bird camp from my thief tab here.

What you see is the summarized portion of my sneak attack performance at this particular camp. The information is separated so it's easily distingushable.

The summary section comes in two phases. The full summary, and a broken down one below.

The full summary is circled in red, and it incorporates everything you did with sneak attack, from solo sneak attacks, to stacked weaponskills, to missed solo attempts and outputs it in the top field. In my example I used sneak attack 54 times throughout the course of the party, of these 54 uses one of them was in whitegate, (hence it failed because no attack was made), and 19 were used in conjunction with dancing edge. The other 34 were solo attempts.

The section below is circled in blue, and corresponds to your solo sneak attack attempts. In this example I soloed sneak attack 34 times. of these 34 times I landed 21 of them, meaning a 61% success rate. The criticals that landed averaged to 475 damage, but because 13 of them missed my true average of all soloed sneak attacks was only 316 damage per. Had I landed more of them it would have been closer to the 475 mark in both fields.

As you can see in my screenshot, kParser is capable of distinguishing when sneak attack is used in conjunction with a weaponskill, when sneak attack is soloed and the hit lands (which is designated by the mark of "critical" and the corresponding damage output), and a sneak attack that is soloed but misses (designated by "miss" with the corresponding damage if you still hit the mob or 0 if it was a total whiff). You will also see that kparser distingusihes the use iof hide with abilities, as my screenshot shows a sneak attack + Hide that was soloed for 446 damage.

Kparser has 4 fields on the thief tab each built like this. One for SA + TA, one for TA, one for SA, and one for solo weaponskills. Using this and some common sense you can separate what portion of your damage comes from true melee DoT, and what percentage each of your abilities and weaponskills are actually contributing to your final perfiormance.

For example, if on the offense tab you see melee 100,000 damage, and dancing edge 50,000 damage you can then open the thief tab to break that down further. Looking into this you may see 25,000 damage of solo dancing edges, 20,000 damage of sneak attacked dancing edges, and 5,000 damage of trick attacked dancing edges. Of sneak attack solo you did 10,000 damage, and trick attack solo you did 10,000 damage. This would mean.

This puts your melee to ability damage at an 8/7 ratio. This is of course just an example, but it shows how to read the parse and pick out areas that interest you most. Using kparser you can find out everything your thief is doing, and of course the melee accuracy, total swings, hit/miss, and average + high + low are on the offense tab as normal.

EDIT: Edited the link to the download mirror in accordance with kinematic's request (I didn't know that one existed). Thanks for that.

Just a note: Please point people at the google page for downloading ( http://code.google.com/p/kparser/ ) instead of my home server. My personal server is a backup, but you're far more likely to find google available, plus can report bugs and such.

Also, you don't need to keep all tabs open all the time. You can close individual tabs (either from the Windows menu or right-clicking on the tab list) or all 'other' tabs than the one you're focused on. If you have performance problems, closing tabs is the easiest way to reduce the load on the CPU.

Kparser is a magnificent program. I do find that on my maching (only 1 gig of RAM) if can lag me a little though. Thankfully the new year is promising me a new machine, so I shouldn't run into this problem again :)

This is seriously a THF's wet dream when it comes to performance management, I recommend it to anyone that plays on PC.

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95THF, 95DRG, 90BRD, 94BLM, 95BLU, 90COR - Retired: Nov 2011 Someday soon my friends, this ride will come to and end, and we can't just get in line again.

I'm having an issue with Kparser, It never wants to open up, Could anyone with some "technical" experience take a look at this error log? I have tried but I'm not even relatively close when it comes to this type of stuff, It could be something simple *shrug* Thanks.

""""""""""""""" See the end of this message for details on invoking just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text ************** System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. File name: 'System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' at WaywardGamers.KParser.Plugin.ThiefPlugin..ctor()

************** JIT Debugging ************** To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this application or computer (machine.config) must have the jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section. The application must also be compiled with debugging enabled.

Mel glossed over the requirements section for running KParser (it's in the readme.txt file on the google site and in the zip file). That error message means that you haven't installed .NET 3.5 yet. You'll need to install .NET and SQLCE 3.5 before running KParser.

Sorry for being a lazy ******* and all....But could someone with experience using kparser and directparse tell me the difference between the two? Obviously, they both do the same general thing, but I'm sure there are subtle (And maybe some not so subtle?) differences.

I know it's free, I just haven't got around to trying it out and I don't really like change.

At the base level they do the same thing: read the chat log, break down the information about who attacked what for how much, etc, and compile it into information for you to peruse.

The primary difference is in how much depth each analyzes that information. DirectParse is sufficient if you just want basic hit rates, average melee/weaponskill damage, crit rates, etc. It also handles a certain degree of loot distribution parsing.

KParser is more detailed in getting into average damage per weaponskill/ability type (eg: Tachi: Kasha, Tachi: Gekko, High Jump, etc, rather than just the 'weaponskill' section and the 'ability' section). Every single event that occurs is timestamped, and that's used in a lot of the further analysis. In contrast, DirectParse is mainly about collating summary information and breaking that down into averages.

KParser also provides a lot more information on the non-offensive side: defensive detail (which players got attacked, how often, how much damage they took); information on curing vs damage taken; buffs & debuffs (including min/max/average reuse timers, and I'm working on things like paralyze proc rates and attack speed); full detail listing of all hits done by or against any player; item use by player; expanded loot analysis (including HELM results); and experimental plugins such as the Thief tab (SATA information), the Damage Per Minute tab and the Multi-Attack tab.

My goal in writing KParser was to provide as much detail as possible about everything that happens in combat in order to allow very specific datamining/analysis of the results. It's not for everyone, as there's far more information than most people will generally use, but it's all out there for you to dig through if you're trying to figure stuff out.

As a side note, KParser is capable of importing parses from DirectParse, so it's quite ok to use DirectParse most of the time, and just import one of those parses when you want to look at something in more detail. Technically DirectParse should be able to import KParser files as well, but I don't think they've put that in.

quick question, will kparser work if using a windower outside of the game's built in one or would the memloc be different?

I know it works with direct parse, but for me windowers time stamp function would mess parses up so you have to disable that plug in.

I've never had an issue with it. The only messed up parses I've gotten were with me as brd(was trying to get exp per hour, but it still messed even that up). Seems being away from the party to pull causes it to count the kill as 0 exp.

Neither KParser nor DirectParse are affected by the type of windower you use (or even no windower at all). They read game memory (optionally, in KParser's case), which is independant of where stuff gets displayed.

KParser 'should' work with Windower's Timestamp plugin. It's had problems in the past, but as far as I know it's working fine now. Also, if you've set it up to read log files instead of RAM, and also have Timestamp running, it will use the timestamps to mark the time on messages read instead of putting the same timestamp on all messages from each log file.

On the brd xp thing, it can only calculate xp if you get the message that you received xp when the mob is killed. If you're far enough away you won't get that message. I'm also not sure if you actually get the xp; never tested that.

On the brd xp thing, it can only calculate xp if you get the message that you received xp when the mob is killed. If you're far enough away you won't get that message. I'm also not sure if you actually get the xp; never tested that.

Actually, I think you may have fixed it already... I had some issues with using the newer version (1.1.7) from the google page, and so was still 1.0.7. I managed to get 1.1.7 working now(by pulling that setup file off your personal server, probably wasn't doing something I missed reading). Anyway, if I pull the same parse up side by side in 1.0.7 and 1.1.7 they show a different amount of fights, exp, average time/fight, avg fight length in the experience tab. A difference of 4k exp, and 3k exp per hour, and it dropped off 43 fights.

If I look in the fights tab(on either), it shows 114, but 38 of them are 0 exp fights(which we didn't have, so I assume is the parser picking up the same fight if I go out of range and come back). Guess it was a glitch in reading that has since been fixed.

As an update to my earlier comment on melee/solo/ability etc useage due to the fact i was misreading my numbers it alters the focus of melee DoT significantly.

Of my 183,865 damage I only did 21,680 with SA and TA solo Of my 183,865 I did 34,217 damage with solo dancing edge Of my 183,865 damage I did 35,336 damage with stacked dancing edges.

The rest was pure melee DoT. That means

21,680 + 34,217 + 35,336 = 91,233

Considering this I did 91,233 damage by abilities and weaponskills and 183,865 damage in normal melee DoT. That puts abilities/weaponskills at 049.6 % of my entire damage output and it puts melee DoT at 50.4% of my entire damage output

That puts melee DoT to Weaponskill/ability useage at a perfect 1/1 ratio for that party, so exactly half of what I did was melee DoT and half was ability/weaponskill.

Considering that the slow penalty of a solo sneak attack is so massive and i only landed 61% of my soloed attempts, I'm considering trying only stacking SA with weaponskill, especially since all my dex is in there and a SA DE is MORE powerfuil than a separated solo DE and solo SA, and then soloing TA every time. The times I lose haste to solo SA are really detrimental, so I'm gonna tinker with this and fine tune this aspect.

And Kinematics calculated the line where forager's overpowers cuchulain's mantle for melee DoT to be 88% accuracy. If your accuracy is less than 88% Cuchulain's is the better back, if it's over 88% accuracy forager's mantle is the better back. I followed his numbers, and they're right on.

Edited, Dec 25th 2008 11:39am by Melphina

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[ffxisig]56619[/ffxisig]

There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

a little off topic but what is a good way to screen shot the results? been trying to post them, for ls events. cant seem to find an easy way to do it.

Screenshotting the results is extremely easy. From windows desktop open the parser and open the data file with the tab you want to screenshot active and hit Alt + Print Screen. This is a feature built right into windows, and screenshots/copies the image. The rest is easy, once you have your screenshot taken open up an image editing program (I just use Paint, any every computer in existance has this) and paste the image. Once done, editing it is simple, from blotting out other players names, to cutting out only portions of the data you need and more. If you want a step by step guide with visuals

Is there any way kparser could track TP return and match it to the weaponskill damage in the log? (Or does it already do it?) I'd love to be able to see a list of weaponskills used along with damage and TP return for each.

I tried to get this running for my thf I've always wanted to parse it but could never get them running, this look easy enough but looks like I have the same problem as Kensai. I have .framework 3.0 service pack 1 for windows xp 64 bit. Which I think is the latest for 64 bit, because it isn't listed on the compatibility for .net framework 3.5.

I also have SQLSC 3.5 SP1 x64 installed so that isn't it.

I know it's the .net framework. My question is how, if I can, install the 3.5 framework on a 64 bit OS?

Changes: 1.3.9 (May 28, 2009) * Significant rewrite of RAM monitoring code for simplified detection and better handling of message tracking. * Link detection and handling is added to the tabs' text boxes. This means that if a URL shows up in the Chat tab (must start with http://), you can click on it to open the link in a browser window. * Adjust parsing to allow 5-digit numbers, for instances of over 10,000 damage being done. * Start adjusting code to better handle different OS locales. - On Items tab, details view, times were not being converted to local timezone. Corrected. - Fix typo that caused counters to be listed as retaliations. - Bug fix: The Thief plugin occasionally had a null reference when checking weaponskill usage. - Bug fix: Self-cast AOE buffs weren't showing everyone who was affected by the spell in the Buffs tab.

subadai wrote:

Is there any way kparser could track TP return and match it to the weaponskill damage in the log? (Or does it already do it?) I'd love to be able to see a list of weaponskills used along with damage and TP return for each.

Unfortunately, no, that's not possible at this time.

wyrmnax wrote:

Does anyone know if it works with Vista 64?

It should work in 64-bit OSes (XP64, Vista64, and Win7/64). I have an install of Win7/64bit that I'm including in my testing.

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Data.SqlServerCe, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. File name: 'System.Data.SqlServerCe, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91'

This seems to be the message I receive. I have read the error note you included but I don't know how to set the registry value "[HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD)" to 1. Can you guys please help me resolve the issue?

For some reason, I can't change the settings of FUSLOGW. I downloaded the zap file, extracted it, and ran the program. Once it started up, I hit setting to change it to log all binds to disk, but everything is gray out.

I also tried to copy the dll file since System.Data.SqlServerCe did not exist. Unfortunately, the dll file also does not exist. I have downloaded SQLCE 3.5 and all other necessary files and rechecked it. Can you please help me get kparser up and running?

Eh, lost track of this thread. Sorry for not getting back to you, Valdar.

Had to rebuild my computer system, and finally have everything running nicely on Win7/64.

So with that, new version released, 1.4.3. Revised how it deals with the sqlce -- namely, those files are now included, and the program manifest is adjusted to (hopefully) fix this problem entirely.

Changelog:

1.4.3 (November 2, 2009) - Fix (?) issue regarding presence of SQLCE. Finally just including the files directly in the .zip, and including some redirects in the program's manifest. Can hope that this eliminates the SQL problem. - Fix issue with needing administrative rights to run in Vista and Windows 7. Don't have to set it manually anymore. - Fix bugs in parsing 'no effect' enfeebles. - Fix bug in parsing use of Feather Tickle by blue mage mobs. - Fix bug in parsing certain ability names. - Fix bug in error logging. - Fix bug in handling the Recent Files list. * Compact long file names in the Recent Files list. Added tooltips for full path. + Started to revise Damage/Minute plugin, ended up creating an entirely new one: Performance. D/M will be deprecated. -- Note: the calculations to reach DPM (or DPS) are done differently in the two plugins, and probably will not match. I believe the new version is more accurate.

Name substitution is the most significant change in this one. Have fun with it.

1.4.4 (November 4, 2009) - Fix minor threading bug in Performance plugin. + Added ability set a display name for players. With this, photoshopping screenshots should no longer be necessary. ~~ Usage: If player info text starts with text enclosed in square brackets (eg: [war/nin]), then that string will be used in place of the player's name if the option to do so is set in the Edit menu (and can thus be quickly toggled on and off). An asterisk will be prepended to the text to indicate that it is user-defined. Text more than 15 characters long will be truncated to avoid spacing issues compared to real names. ~~ Examples: The war/nin (as used above) would thus have the name of "*war/nin". Other players might be shown as "*Relic sam" or "*Spoony bard". ~~ This does not change the names listed in the player selection drop-downs on various tabs. This also does not change the names listed in the Salvage subsection of the Loot tab. ~~ When the database structure is upgraded, this feature will move to its own field instead of being a fudge in part of the player info field. * Changed Unparsed Data plugin to Raw Data plugin, with the option to either show only unparsed lines (what was shown before), or all lines logged. ~~ NOTE: Be aware that loading all raw data can take a long time for a large parse. You should generally Not change the type while in the middle of a parse.

Hmm. Well, in the Offense tab you can select individual fights and see how much damage was done, but there isn't a tab that just shows a summary of that. I can write something up to show min/average/max damage done per mob/type/level. Would be fairly barebones, though; anything else of that nature you'd like to see?

Oh, that's ok, I don't need a list or anything. Being able to select the mob in Offense will do just fine. I think I looked there but again, I tend to overlook the painfully obvious when I first start to use a program until I get comfortable with it.

1.4.5 (November 9, 2009) * Made changes in analyzing fight deaths. If an 'other' entity (non-self/party/alliance) kills a mob, the program firsts checks to see if that entity had any other actions against the battle in question. If not, then it enters it as a separate fight instead of ending the current fight. The purpose of this is to fix the issue of someone outside your party killing a mob and it ending your current fight, showing up in the mob listings as (for example) two mobs killed, each with half the normal health, one for 0 xp and the other for normal xp. This causes problems in segregating test data by mob level. The requirement for the 'other' entity to have performed a visible action in the current fight is to not erronously create fake fights due to pets (avatars/puppets/etc) getting the killing blow, since all pets are classified as 'other' entities. If your filters prevent you seeing such actions, you may end up with misleading fight data. + Offense and Defense Details plugins now show an integrated sequence of melee and ranged hits (crits and non-crits) when Show Details is selected. - Fix bug in displaying Raw Data when switching between all and unparsed. - Improve handling of identification of Notorious Monsters as mobs rather than charmed players, and the consequant occasional mis-identification of players as charmed mobs. + Add parsing of new "sweet spot" message for ranged attacks. Still missing the third possible ranged attack message. * Updated default memloc to new value: 0x005801d8

Edit: 1.4.5.1 released with the full fix for the new ranged attacks messages.

But unfortunately since the update the memory read function is not working for me, (it does work from the logs). I'm pretty sure the address is right because when I change it I can see it in the error logs. Other wise its just blank, (seems similar to if I have the memloc wrong).

I've tried to completely remove it from my system and give it a fresh install and same issue. The last couple post in this thread seem to be alluding to the same issue as well:

I just downloaded the latest and the memloc was already correct, didn't have to change anything. This was with the plain zipped version, not the installer version. Try downloading the plain one, see if that works.

Timestamps are recorded in UTC, then converted to the local time zone of the computer you're on for display. If you're looking at a parse by someone in a different time zone, the times you'll see are the appropriate local equivalent of whenever they recorded the parse. Only valid after version 1.3, though; have to use the special reparse conversion for parses prior to that.

Did you run it as administrator if on Vista/Win 7? not doing so screws up so many apps lol. I couldnt figure out for at least a week why my spellcast xml files would revert back to what they where before i edited them every time i edited them. All came down to remembering to make sure its running as admin.

If it starts and doesnt crash, I think that means that all the stuff you need to install is working correctly, so admin is all i can think of.

Version 1.4.7 released. I think this may finally fix the parsing problem a bunch of people (such as Dagiraffe and Buront) were having. The change was minor and "shouldn't" have caused this, but apparently I was wrong.